The Social Network Reveals Facebook’s Creation

The Social Network was a massive hit at the box office when it was released in 2010. People flocked to the movies to discover a dramatized version of the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the young computing genius who created the biggest social network on the web. Currently standing as the third largest US web company in the world (just behind Google and Amazon), Facebook is used by over 600 million people around the world with countless other inactive accounts listed in its database. But what’s its story? After all, with so many people actively using Facebook on a daily basis, it makes sense to want to know where it all came from, right? Well, The Social Network explains everything.



While it should be remembered that The Social Network is still an entertainment picture, it interprets the story of how Mark Zuckerberg brought Facebook to life. It began with his first web foray, Facemash, which showed him just how much potential there was in websites that allowed people to interact socially and view images and information about people they knew. Facemash was very similar to the popular website Hot or Not, but Zuckerberg put an interesting spin on things: the only people displayed on Facemash were women from Harvard University – people that Zuckerberg and his classmates would know. This added an increased level of personal enjoyment to the site, and it was this enjoyment through voyeurism and interaction which we know led Zuckerberg to his brainwave conceiving Facebook. By collecting images and information about people on a site which was easy to access and navigate, Zuckerberg could bring people exactly what they wanted via a social network that would allow them to not only spy on their friends – openly, of course – but also to interact with them via messages.

The Social Network is far from a documentary film reeling off this information, however: it is also fraught with the drama that Zuckerberg himself faced when accused of stealing ideas from fellow Harvard students, as well as getting sued by the aforementioned students and his best friend for allegedly cheating him out of his share of the company.



The film is just as dramatic as it is an insight into the inception of Facebook, and it’s well worth watching. You can pick up The Social Network DVD today and check out the story behind Facebook for yourself – and you might just find yourself inspired to give a similar kind of entrepreneurial idea a try yourself some day!